“Today, and for the next two weeks, communities across the Cape Flats, the Western Cape and South Africa will face the annual drama of confusion, disappointment and discrimination that characterises the opening of schools every year”, stated Nceba Enge, Secretary General of the People’s Movement for Change (PMC).

It therefore comes as no surprise that the Department of Basic Education (DBE) had to field a barrage of frustrated calls from flustered parents who could not register their children for the school year because they could not pay registration fees.

SG Enge continued that, “While we welcome and commend the department for issuing a hurried and urgent warning to all school governing bodies and principals to desist from this unlawful practice, we are concerned that nothing is being done to address this annual tendency.”

At the same the PMC echoes the call for parents to file complaints, and report such incidents, with the relevant district and or provincial authorities. We are concerned that children and families in poor communities are being targeted by both illegal practices such as these, and have become the object of a deliberate ‘dumbing down’ campaign, particularly in the Western Cape.

According to a recent international reading literacy study, South Africa performed worse than all 56 other countries who participated. One of the findings was that 8 out of 10 learners in our schools cannot read with comprehension. In 2016 illiteracy was at 78%, in 2023 it was at a whopping 81%.

“Our children are the victims of a fundamentally flawed basic education system that is feeding the ever-growing unemployment queues on the one hand, and prison cells on the other,” Enge stressed.

This attack on the very building blocks of any society, its children, is nowhere more evident than in the DA-run Western Cape province, where there is a policy of school closures, without a school building programme.

“It doesn’t require a rocket scientist to figure out that the DA plan is working: it is creating havoc in schools in predominantly poor, Black (African, Coloured, Indian) communities, manifesting as disruptions, overcrowding and displacement. The ensuing chaos on school campuses breeds rampant crime, leads to high rates of repeat incarceration of especially young kids from so-called Coloured communities on the Cape Flats and the Western Cape hinterland, to a somewhat lesser degree.

We can’t trust the DA to solve a problem they created,” Enge added, “We have to do something about it ourselves. As parents, families and communities.”

The PMC itself, through a specific Back-To-School programme, run by the PMC Youth Command, has started the school year by visiting schools in a number of provinces.

“We want to show our support, amid the expected, inevitable pandemonium that we knew would happen for learners, parents and principals. We will be talking to all roleplayers on a number of school campuses to see what sort of challenges they face every year. This year we wish to do something to alleviate some of the stresses, tensions, frustrations and anxieties of the opening two weeks of the 2024 school year,” the PMC’s SG added. The PMC has already witnessed on the first day of the academic year, what repeat challenges the school-going community will be facing in the next two weeks.

“We know, for instance, that learners in Grades 8 and 9 at the Johannesburg school, Noordgesig, are forced to attend school on a rotational basis – a practice reminiscent of apartheid South Africa,” Enge emphasised. We have also learned today that many children, including new school starters who are 6 years old, have to risk their lives every day because they have to walk through bushes and other dangerous places to school. This is because it is not in the interest of the pro-rich and wealthy DA to provide transport solutions to Black children.

The PMC stands resolutely with communities calling for racial integration and parity and the prioritisation of admitting children from within communities into schools in those same communities. This approach would help alleviate the financial strain on struggling families, particularly those in the poor and working class communities, by eliminating the additional burden of travel and transportation costs.

Enge concluded his message to the children of South Africa by repeating what uTata Madiba said, “Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world”. He added, “As the PMC we want to be a part of the solution that will end this carefully orchestrated curse of the annual chaos of going back to school.”

-ENDS-

ISSUED BY THE OFFICE OF THE  SECRETARY GENERAL OF THE PMC

Nceba Enge
People’s Movement for Change
Secretary General